Neuroscientific Model of Interest Development

• In Event: Assessment of Interest: New Approaches and New Insights

Abstract

Although it may not be impossible to study interest via surveys or field experiments, self-report surveys and behavioral observations have limitations in capturing the exact cognitive and affective processes that are concurrently taking place with the phenomenon of interest because people have only restricted conscious access to their own emotions and cognitions (e.g., Panksepp, 2005). This limitation can be overcome by measuring their neural underpinnings because the fMRI technique permits identification of the in vivo neural substrates of implicit cognitive and affective processes during the very moments of interest generation. By analyzing brain regions that show differential activation which are relatively free of social desirability, false or selective recollection, insincere or otherwise unreliable responses, it is possible to generate credible inferences regarding the ongoing cognitive and affective processes elicited by interest.
There is no functional neuroimaging study to date to directly investigate the neural correlates of interest. However, a growing body of evidence from neuroscience has identified extensive distribution of motivation-related circuitry in the brain, including the ventral striatum and the orbitofrontal cortex. This dopamine pathway has been recognized as a critical region responsible for feeing of interest and engagement, excitement, curiosity, and intrinsically motivated exploration as well as novel and unexpected stimuli. This exploratory behavior system is also called the SEEKING system (Panksepp, 1998) or Behavioral Activation System (Gray, 1990). Recent findings on the neural distinction between liking and wanting support the view of dopamine circuits as wanting processes rather than liking processes (Berridge, 2007).
On the basis of neuroscientific evidence on emotion and motivation, I propose a model of interest development which involves two separate interest systems: the situational interest system and the individual interest system. The situational interest system is an object-value system in which the specific object is associated with subjective experience of pleasure and the hedonic value of object is represented. This is akin to liking processes for which opioid system such as OFC-amygdala pathway is responsible. In contrast, individual interest system is an action-value system in which effort and cost for each action are estimated and an action is selected based on incentive salience. This is similar to wanting processes which depend in particular on mesolimbic dopaminergic system ACC-nucleus accumbens.
Assuming that interest development is a dynamic process, the interest development model focuses on the how situational interest is generated, situational interest becomes individual interest, and individual interest is maintained. In this model, the generation of situational interest is regarded as a process of coding hedonic impact associated with the specific object in the situational interest system, whereas the transition from situational interest to individual interest is considered as a decision-making process on the action selection depending on the utility value and competence for an action which is computed in the individual interest system. Finally, the maintenance of individual interest is a process of effort regulation based on cognitive control in the executive function system.

Author

• Sung-Il Kim, Korea University